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Monday, 18 September 2017

Stress Testing the Mega Kossel: Building C. Laimer's Tourbillon Watch

Tourbillon Clock

After the painting project from last time, I decided to try building a more mechanically complex project, Christoph Laimer's Tourbillon Watch (thing:1249221). It's a very complicated model with very tight printing tolerances, all the parts need to be as close to perfect as possible or the clock won't work properly.

Printing the mainspring pinion gear on the Mega Kossel

Obviously the first step in this project was lots of printing, about 100-120 hours in total, perfect for shaking out any glitches in the printer. Aside from a couple of spaghetti incidents caused by the print bed shifting on it's mounts, actually printing the parts was the easiest part of the project, tracking down compatible screws was the hardest part, I ended up reaming most of the screw holes to accept M2 screws since those were the closest that I could find.

Actually building the clock took a few days, the virtual walkthrough and assembly videos were invaluable for this stage, always making it clear what part was installed next at every step of the process.

Mainspring fully installed with outer casing in place

Clock parts set out for assembly

I ended up using some 14-gauge wire cut to length for the gearing axles, long needle nose pliers are crucial for installing them in the upper center plate. Other tools I used were a 3/64-inch drill bit for reaming the gears mounting holes and a Philips screwdriver for the M2 screws. After a couple of days work I had it assembled and mostly working, one of the gears is a bit sticky on its axis, but it's mostly complete.